Indian Country

Imagine the Dred Scott Decision Were Still the Law of the Land

April 2, 2012

. An Indigenous People Forum on the Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery was held on March 23 on the floor of the Arizona State House of Representatives. “The event was hosted by the Native American Caucus of the Arizona State Legislature, and presided over by the O’otham Hemuchkam upon whose traditional territories as O’otham [...]

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CineFile – The Last of the Mochicans

January 15, 2012

. From my recent Geronimo post, we’ve had a brief discussion in the comments section about John Ross, Chief of the Cherokee at the time the Great Removal (in contemporary terminology, “ethnic cleansing), or Trail of Tears, and Andrew Jackson, and who should really be on the $20 bill. One of the actors in the [...]

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CineFile – Cheyenne Autumn

January 8, 2012

. Yesterday’s post on Geronimo put me in mind of John Ford‘s Cheyenne Autumn. The excerpt from We Shall Remain noted how within only several years of Geronimo’s capture he had transformed in the American consciousness from demon savage into the iconic fierce warrior. (The U.S. special forces operation that killed Osama bin Laden was code-named “Geronimo.”) John Ford spent much [...]

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How We Lived On It (45) – Geronimo

January 7, 2012

. Just over three years ago, Julia and I were present for the aftermath of a blessing ceremony – the participants and witnesses of which had been Apaches only – on the San Carlos Apache reservation. “The purpose of the ceremony,” I wrote at the time, “was to prepare the land for the installation of [...]

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Warriors in Transition

November 4, 2011

. A little while back I stopped in at the New York branch of the National Museum of the American Indian. It is housed in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, a monumental Beaux Arts building at the Battery and a National Historic Landmark  listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It has been adapted on [...]

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In Memory of Elouise Cobell

October 18, 2011

. This blog began in late 2008 to recount my yearlong nationwide travels through Indian Country with documentary photographer Julia Dean. Those travels themselves were inspired by my publication earlier that year of “Aboriginal Sin,” in Tikkun. The article (scroll down for an image link on the right) presented an overview of the historic assault [...]

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“Special” Rights and the Accomplices to Discrimination That Are Those Who Call Them So

September 2, 2011

In a recent Indian Country Today essay, Peter d’Errico, the eminent Native American rights advocate, argued that “we need to be careful with the phrase ‘special rights.’ Perhaps we shouldn’t even use it.” In this instance, I think d’Errico is too moderate in his judgment. d’Errico was writing about the term specifically in its application [...]

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Time to Renounce the Doctrine of Discovery

July 25, 2011

Not much reason amid all the attention on reaching a debt deal that most people, including in the media, would have paid any attention to a meeting of the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Not much reason ever, by normal lights. Still, the happy advent of Gay marriage in New York managed to catch [...]

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From the Annals of Indigenous Resistance: “Terrorism”

July 13, 2011

How, you were wondering, is the field of power like a four-walled racquetball court? Sometimes the strikes are straight on, at the front wall or (oops, sorry) at your opponent’s back. Sometimes – often, in fact – there is the ricochet, off the side wall, angled then low on the back, then low to the [...]

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The Navajo Concentration Camp at Bosque Redondo

February 4, 2011

The premise from which I write about American Indian issues is that while some Americans are ignorant, callous, and self-justifying about the nation’s history with Native America – and sometimes, still, clearly racist – most people are ignorant in the innocent sense of simply lacking knowledge. Most Americans, one can learn merely from raising the [...]

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Native America in the Courts of the Conqueror

January 28, 2011

Image via Wikipedia A common sense of the matter among those little knowledgeable or arrogantly unreflective about the Native conquest in what became the United States is that it took the form, simply, of ages old civilizational conflicts, in which one expanding and militarily superior culture historically and amorally superseded another. Like the Persian Empire [...]

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Cobell v. Salazar Heads for Settlement after 14 Years

December 3, 2010

This email arrived from Elouise Cobell late yesterday afternoon. As I stated in my last Ask Elouise letter of November 22, 2010, the Senate passed the Cobell Settlement as part of the Claims Resolution Act of 2010. Since that time, I and our Representatives have been advocating for the successful passage of our settlement to [...]

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The Lakota and the Pine Ridge Reservation

November 30, 2010

Aaron Huey, an extraordinary photographer and journalist of growing acclaim has covered stories all over the world, from Afghanistan to walking across the U.S. Probably no project of his – and it is very much a personal project, not an assignment – has garnered more attention than his several years establishing relationships and photographing on [...]

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A Proper Apology to Native America

November 26, 2010

Though I have been advocating for a few years now an annual day of remembrance of the crimes against Native America, to coincide in historically instructive fashion with Columbus Day, Thanksgiving is, for what should be obvious reasons, a good time to remember too. Indian Country Today reports, President Barack Obama will be asked – [...]

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The End of the Indian Wars: 120 Years and Counting

November 24, 2010

I first wrote about Cobell v. Salazar in Tikkun in March, 2008, when that Individual Trust Fund lawsuit was already 12 years old. Lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell‘s pursuit of an accounting and settlement of land use fees collect in trust by the Department of the Interior since 1887 had met nothing but delay and obstruction [...]

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The American Indian Tribal Colleges

November 8, 2010

(This is a guest post by Brian Jenkins of BrainTrack. BrainTrack is the oldest and largest directory of universities and colleges on the Web. It provides information on over 10,000 institutions listed from over 190 countries. Brian has been writing about education and career topics for BrainTrack for the past two years. He has contributed [...]

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Facing National Wrongs

October 8, 2010

Over the past several days Jeffrey Goldberg has been blogging about what I like to refer to as recalcitrant Southern boobs – the kind of people who display the Confederate Stars and Bars, who advocate and maintain that flag as any part of a state symbol, or who argue that there was anything honorable in [...]

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Storylines

September 8, 2010

Maureen Doallas, the Columbus, Magellan, and Vasco da Gama of bloggers, always discovering new worlds in this one while navigating the idea-swept oceans of the Web, leads us to another: Debut of Australian Indigenous Art Website A new Website showcasing Indigenous artists from urban Australia has debuted: Storylines. A joint effort by The University of [...]

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Ancestors and Descendants: Ancient Southwestern America at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

September 8, 2010

If you are in, or in reach of, New Orleans this fall and share this blog’s interest in Native America, be sure to catch this exhibit at the New Orleans Museum of Art. A little known American Indian archive is currently on display at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) until October 24, 2010.  [...]

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The Hidden World of Girls – Brave Heart Women’s Society

September 4, 2010

From The Hidden World of Girls website: A NEW KITCHEN SISTERS RADIO SERIES ON NPR THE KITCHEN SISTERS are launching a new NPR multimedia series exploring the hidden world of girls. Stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secret identities—of women who crossed a line, blazed a trail, changed the tide. This [...]

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Cobell v. Salazar: Fourteen Years and Counting

July 2, 2010

More than six months and several deadline extensions for Congressional approval after the negotiated settlement of the fourteen-year-old Individual Indian Money Trust Fund suit, Cobell v. Salazar, Indian Country Today reports Cobell settlement stumbles in Senate Any last-minute hopes that the Cobell settlement could pass the Senate as part of a tax extenders package before [...]

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